Flying V Tales: Growing Up on the Matador Ranch

The life of a cowboy isn't easy. It's hard, hot, dangerous work that starts before dawn and doesn't end until dark. It can be fatal-a horse fall, being bucked off a bronc, a foot hung in a stirrup, snakebite, frostbite, heat stroke, tangled in a rope, lost fingers, broken bones-the ways to get hurt in ranch work are unlimited.

Author Gene Shelton lived that life. He grew up in the 1950s on the Matador Ranch in the Texas Panhandle.

This is Gene's story: a story of cowboys and bosses, horses, chuckwagon cooks, line camp life, twice-a-year roundups, branding time, blizzards, near constant wind, rodeos and breaking horses.in these pages.

He wouldn't have it any other way.